Bone Lord 3

by Dante King

  “Well, if this body of yours has limited time left to enjoy this world as only it can...” I watched her nipples press with urgency through her robe. “Then we’d best have as much fun with it as we can, don’t you agree? I think we can do our best to reassign the climax of your human life you mentioned before to an honorable second place.”

  “I completely agree.” Friya sank to her knees, took out my stiffening cock, and wrapped her lips around it with all the passion of a last opportunity.

  Chapter Fifteen

  We set off later that morning. My balls were drained from all the “ceremonies” I’d had with Friya, but my mind was full of ideas, thoughts, worries. I was confident I’d be able to defeat my uncle, especially if I gained some new powers and skills from the Hothgrumian warriors’ upcoming battle. By carrying my enchanted coins, every soul they took would go to me. However, the fact that I’d be able to kick my uncle’s ass wouldn’t matter much if I didn’t get to him before he sacrificed Lucielle to the Blood God. This was a race against time more than anything else.

  We were now truly heading into the unknown, and anything could happen. Friya hadn’t seen Aith or the Arachne herself, so everything she told me relied on second-hand reports from the few Hothgrumian warriors who had been there and lived to tell the tale.

  After a few days, we’d left the ice and snow behind. Once we’d made our way through the Wastes, we swung in a southwesterly direction, into a mostly unmapped part of Prand that was only accessible on foot. Now that I had Rami-Xayon back with my party, I was able to use my harpy, Talon, for scouting ahead again, which proved tremendously useful.

  The current terrain was all steep slopes, deep ravines, and impassable valleys with sheer drops into them, cliff walls over a mile high. The forests were thick here, and the tall, tightly packed trees made everything dark and gloomy. Monsters or unknown creatures might be lurking in the shadows here, and the others were certainly nervous—even Drok and Rollar, and Friya, who claimed to have been here before. Rami-Xayon, however, was not afraid, and neither was Isu. Although Isu did seem increasingly nervous and agitated the closer we came to Aith. She would hover around and swoop in on me and Rami-Xayon whenever the two of us began talking about the Purge.

  To say that there was no love lost between the two of them would be putting it very mildly. Rami-Xayon became so angry when Isu was around that she could barely speak. She was exercising immense restraint to avoid unleashing her wrath on the former Goddess of Death. As for Isu, while she would goad Rami-Xayon into these rages with incisive comments and biting sarcasm, and for all her attitude, she was losing some of the brash confidence that had once defined her. Especially when we were alone. On the rare occasions she managed to get me alone, she seemed to be revealing a more vulnerable side. There was something both intriguing and sad about it. I’d always felt a small measure of guilt for having taken her divinity, though to be fair, she had basically offered it up to me on a plate. Part of me suspected that she had made it so easy for me to snatch away her divinity because she had grown weary of being a goddess, almost as though she’d wanted a way out of it. Now, I figured I’d begun to understand why she had been feeling this way. She’d been carrying a burden for years—centuries even—a burden of soul-crushing guilt. For days, it had seemed things were about to come to a head with Rami-Xayon and Isu. All I had to do to get the truth about Isu’s role in the disappearance of the Old Gods was wait.

  Grave Oath’s frequent buzzing against my hip signaled that the Hothgrumian warriors had been successful in both defeating their enemies and stealing souls for me. The Gray Tree called out to me with increasing insistency, promising new powers waiting to be plucked from its branches like ripe fruit. So, one night, when the others had gone to sleep, I walked out into the thick woods and closed my eyes to travel to the Black Plane, where the tree grew. I walked across the black, glassy floor toward the enormous sentinel and saw that some of the fog from the branches halfway up the tree had cleared, revealing not one but two skills.

  The first was a glowing image of a zombie human, but while the zombie was obviously dead, the corpse looked fresh and was not rotting or foul. I clenched my hand into a triumphant fist.

  This was a skill I’d been waiting to obtain for quite some time.

  No longer would my human zombies rot and have their flesh putrefy and slough off their bones. Now, like my undead creatures, I would be able to keep them relatively fresh, albeit dead. They’d still be in a state of minor decay, but the rot would progress at a far slower rate.

  I eagerly clambered up the gray branches and snatched the glowing figure from the branch, grinning as a zap of energy sizzled inside my bones. My muscles swelled with new strength, and my soul felt as if a raging fire had been ignited in its core. I was advancing now beyond the limitations of being a minor deity. Now, with these new skills and an increase in my life force, energy, and general ability to wield magical power, I was becoming a respected deity. I wasn’t quite in the league of the major gods just yet, but that stratospheric advancement was nowhere near as distant as it had formerly been.

  As for the fact that there was a second skill available for me to pluck, I figured that Cranton and Grast were being successful in their mission of spreading the word about the Temple of Necrosis and gathering worshipers of Death all across Prand. They were proving to be adept proselytizers. For every Death Coin they passed out to a disgruntled warrior, a neglected assassin, a disillusioned rogue, or an angry mercenary—all of whom had been let down by the Church of Light or whatever other god they had followed—I gained strength. Indeed, the fog was already starting to clear from the upper branches of the tree, more hints of half-visible powers tantalizingly revealed.

  The other power I was able to rip like a fat fruit from the mid-level branches of the tree was a pair of gray fists, black smoke rising from them. An intriguing find. I gripped the glowing fists, ripped them off the branch, and felt another surge of fresh power. This was a different sort of power; it felt more connected to the forces of rot and decay, somehow—a gray, stinking power, slimy and laden with disease and putrefying flesh. As the gray stench of this new power filled me, like the vile gas of a bloated rotting body, I began to understand what I had acquired.

  It was something I would call Plague Fists.

  A vision entered my mind of myself, unarmed, surrounded by enemy warriors closing in. I raised my hands, taking a pugilist’s stance, and called on the power of the Plague Fists. The skin on my fists bubbled and blistered, turning a dark shade of gray, like the skin of a corpse dead for days. Then, as the first warrior got within range, I lashed out at him with a vicious right cross. The blow hit him with the force of a hundred zombies’ combined strength. Like the chain of my kusarigama, this power drew on the strength of the dead, but it was an entirely different method of drawing on power. My Plague Fists drew on the power of the rot that was eating away at the bodies of the dead—those fallen in battles, those freshly buried, those rotting in catacombs. Dark veins of blackness shot out through my feet into the soil, snaking out in all directions, seeking out dead, rotting bodies, and drinking in the putrefaction that was consuming them, converting it to power that would be transmitted through my fists.

  In addition to the tremendous power of the blows I was able to strike, there was also an instant transferral of the putrefaction from my fist to whatever I hit. In that way, these Plague Fists were like the very first necrotic weapons I had ever used: my throwing stars. The rot that spread from one strike of my fists, though, was far more powerful than that produced by my throwing stars, which I barely used anyway, since they were not effective against Fated or magic-resistant opponents. These Plague Fists, however, would be effective even against adversaries like those.

  I couldn’t wait to try them out.

  With no skills left to pluck, I jumped out of the tree and bounced off the springy ground, which was soft and forgiving, despite looking as smooth as polished marble. Immediately after, w
ith a harsh shudder, I was dropped back in my body, back into the darkness of the dense night forest.

  A twig snapped near me, and I looked up, expecting to see Isu, perhaps, on one of her late-night walks. Maybe it was Rami-Xayon, coming to get from me what she’d been missing while she’d been away. I hoped it was because I’d missed that tight, eager body a lot. This last thought got a feeling of excitement stirring in my crotch.

  However, the gait of the shadowy figure, after I began to perceive it more clearly through the gloom, quickly informed me that this was not one of my followers approaching. Then, I remembered something Friya had said about giving me the gauntlet: now that she had removed the concealment spells, the power of the gauntlet would draw seekers of it like moths to a flame, and some of those seekers would be servants of the Blood God. As the figure started to get closer, crashing determinedly through the undergrowth, I realized what it was that was coming through the trees.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “A fucking Blood Demon.”

  The sight of a wavy dagger silhouetted against a huge yellow moon rising in the distance confirmed this suspicion. What I had on my side this time was speed. I now knew what to expect from a Blood Demon, and I possessed new weapons in my arsenal that I could use against this creature. But it might not be enough. I turned and sprinted back to camp for my breastplate. Friya had said that Cold magic was an especially effective form of magic to use against Blood Magic, and this Blood Demon would be the perfect equivalent of a wooden practice dummy.

  I knew that my new Plague Fists were most effective against living opponents, and the Blood Demon wasn’t that, as it was a physical embodiment of one of the Blood God’s many octopus-like limbs. However, Friya had also said that Death magic was, like Cold magic, effective against the power of Blood. I secured the plate around my torso and felt a frigid energy race through me.

  For good measure I grabbed my kusarigama. I knew that Grave Oath was useless against a Blood Demon since the creature didn’t have a soul, but I suspected that the magic of the kusarigama could come in handy.

  By this time, the Blood Demon had come close enough to the camp that I could hear it eagerly crashing through the undergrowth, and when I looked up at the sight of the big, low moon shining through the close-packed trees, I saw the twisted form of the creature approaching. This time, the demon had possessed the corpse of a barbarian warrior, so it looked far more intimidating than the scrawny young peasant I’d fought before.

  Even so, I knew now that looks meant nothing when it came to these things. Whether possessing the corpse of a toddler or a gigantic barbarian warrior, they all had exactly the same strength.

  I would need some room to maneuver, so I waited for the shambling thing to reach the edge of the camp. The creature stopped at the edge, gripping its wavy red dagger in an overhand grip, and leered at me.

  “We are on the verge of materializing in this plane, you fool,” the thing rasped at me, its voice sounding like the voices of a hundred warriors all roaring at once. “You are too late to stop us! We will eat your soul just like we will the souls of every living thing in this world. Every inch of land will be drowned in a sea of blood! You cannot stop us.”

  “You wanna eat my soul, you ham-fisted shit-for-brains?” I said. “Then come on over here and try to take it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the creature approached, I felt the armor getting colder. The froststone, it seemed, was able to sense the presence of enemies. Then, sections of the ground started to glow with a pale blue light, wispy trails of it rising like fine smoke from the ground and connected to my fingertips. I realized that I could trigger any or all of these wisps of light to throw up an ice wall.

  That gave me an idea.

  I kept my eye on the Blood Demon’s lurching, jerky footsteps, and as soon as it stepped onto a patch of blue light, I triggered the wispy trail attached to it. The ground rumbled briefly, then a 10-foot-high, three-foot-thick wall of ice exploded up from the ground. The force of it hurled the Blood Demon into the air, its body spinning as if punted by a titan. It flew up 50 yards, then came hurtling groundward and smashed into the earth with a potent crunch. The impact would have killed any living thing, but the Blood Demon was no living thing.

  The commotion roused the camp, and everyone was clambering with haste out of their beds and scrambling frantically for weapons. The Blood Demon’s body had been left twisted and bent, but it was still clearly very strong. It struggled to its feet, straightened out its limbs, flashed an evil smile, and came toward me again, its wavy red dagger still gripped in its hand.

  “Lord Vance!” Rollar yelled when he reached my side, the Thunder God’s hammer gripped in his hands. “Stand aside and let me give this foul thing a taste of thunder!”

  “No, Rollar,” I said. “I have this under control. Everyone else, stand back and let me handle this.”

  I grabbed my kusarigama and called up its Wind magic as the Blood Demon advanced. The weapon produced a howling tornado, and with a shout, I directed the madly spinning wind at the Blood Demon. I used the man-sized tornado like a fist to scoop the demon up and smash it through the ice wall. The force with which the demon struck and then shattered the solid wall of ice would have obliterated even a mountain giant, but it didn’t do anything of the sort to the Blood Demon. Part of the wall was still intact, though, so before the tornado faded out, I swung the trapped monster into it with furious force. The tornado faded away, leaving the night air still once more… and the twisted, broken heap of the Blood Demon’s body stood up, still leering with its solid red eyes. This time, the impact had knocked the cursed dagger out of the creature’s hand. Isu saw this, grabbed a rag, and darted over to snatch up the evil weapon before the Blood Demon could retrieve it.

  Now that the demon had been roughed up a little, I figured it would be a good time to try out my new Plague Fists. I summoned their magic, sending black roots blasting out from my feet through the ground to burrow in search of rotting corpses at an incredible speed. It didn’t take long to find them in this forest; there were dead animals everywhere. The black roots sucked in the putrefaction and channeled it through my body. Soon, my hands turned a sickly dark shade of gray. The power of decomposition pulsed ever more insistently in my fists, building up a furious pressure. Keeping the magic boiling in my fist, I waited for the demon to lunge for me, then unleashed everything I’d been holding back.

  I ducked under the creature’s clumsy grab for my throat and slugged it in the stomach with my right fist. The blow hit it with the force of a boulder hurled from a giant trebuchet. The Death magic, concentrated in the form of infectious, explosively spreading decay, was transferred instantly from my fist to the demon’s body.

  The demon was hurled up into the air, the blackness spreading across its midsection. If I had hit a man with one of these fists, not only would he have been blown apart by the sheer force of the blow, but the rot would have consumed his entire body in seconds, turning what remained of him into lumps of blackened flesh.

  Of course, being a limb the Blood God, this Blood Demon was hundreds of times stronger and more resilient than any man. Even so, the damage of this one hit was far more significant than what I’d managed to do to the last Blood Demon with Elyse’s mace. A single blow of my Plague Fists was like 20 of those blows all concentrated into one crushing strike. As the Blood Demon landed from my necrotic punch, I slammed a vicious right cross into its jaw, nearly tearing the demon’s head off its shoulders.

  Even in this state, the Blood Demon sneered at me, its red eyes dripping blood. With its head flopping grotesquely from the piece of meat that somehow kept it attached to the burly body, it came for me again.

  “Haven’t had enough yet, asshole?” I yelled. “Well, come on, the God of Death has plenty more punishment for you!”

  The Blood Demon lunged and swung a punch aimed at my stomach. Instead of dodging or blocking the creature’s arm, I allowed it to strike my breastplate—after all, I had
another new toy to put to the test. As Friya had said, when the demon merely touched my breastplate, it fired a blast of Cold Magic into its hand. The hand instantly turned blue, before ice crystals formed around it, and then, as the fingers froze solid, three of them fell off with a sharp crack and shattered on the floor into shards of ice.

  “Damn,” I muttered, ducking under a left hook the demon swung at my head. “This works even better than I’d hoped!”

  “Get him, Vance!” Anna shouted from the sidelines. “Get that ugly thing!”

  “Kill the Blood Demon!” Rami-Xayon yelled. “Destroy that foul creature, God of Death!”

  “All right, you sack of goat spunk,” I said, “playtime is over. Now you die.”

  I charged in, slamming blow after blow of my Plague Fists into the demon, bobbing and weaving and ducking under whatever punches it threw at me and smashing it with furious combos. Bits of the demon’s flesh, black and rotting, flew off with every crunching blow, until eventually, I planted a perfect uppercut onto its jaw, the force ripping its head right off and sending it sailing up into the treetops.

  The demon’s torn-apart body crumpled at my feet, and the putrefaction magic that had spread quickly transformed what was left into a reeking black lump of festering goo that slowly melted into the earth.

  I released the putrefaction magic from my body, and the black roots that had spread through the soil withdrew into my feet, and my hands returned to their natural color.

  “Those were some powerful fists, Lord Vance,” Rollar said. “The might you put behind those blows makes even the biggest and strongest warrior look like a weakling.”

  “And that putrefaction magic was pretty damn spectacular,” Anna said.

  “Some new skills I picked up, thanks to the warriors of your tribe, Friya and Drok,” I said before turning to Elyse. “And thanks to the mission work of your friends Cranton and Grast.”